The Great Thoughts
Compiled by George Seldes

Seldes had a fantastic integrity of character and was one of the great muckraking journalists; he wrote Witness to a Century. I put him with Studs Terkel or Howard Zinn, in that tradition of historians who speak truth to power. I read and reread this collection of quotes for years. It was a road map to the world of literature, to philosophers and thinkers, to poets and writers. If I saw a play or a film or a book about a certain subject and I wanted to know more, I'd go to this collection for what had been said on the same themes. That, in turn, would lead me to other books.